super 8 blow up

[Cheung]

Hi,
anybody here ever try to blow up your super 8 to 16mm ? How's the result ?K40? Plus-X or Tri-X ? Or other stock ?

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[Matt Pacini]

I haven't actually done it, but I'm sure there are one or two on this board who may have.

If I were to do a blowup, it would be to 35mm. The only reason to do a blowup, is to project in a theater, and if you're going to invest that much, I would think you wouldn't want to limit the venues you can show your film.
Not all theaters have 16mm setups.

Interformat in San Francisco has been doing Super 8 blowups for many, many years.
If you're looking for techical info, call them, orvisit their website.

Matt Pacini

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[MovieStuff]

I've blown both Tri-X and K40 up to 16mm in Jet Benny and it worked great. Transferring off an interneg makes controlling contrast much easier. However, splices seem to add jumps in the image that you don't get on a contact print.

Roger

[Alex]

I had Michael Hinton of Interformat do a Super8mm to 16mm blow-up for me back in the mid 80's.

Michael Hinton can do skip splice blow-ups for a small additional fee to eliminate the jump at splice points Roger speaks of.

Of course, you have to make sure you can afford to lose 2 to 4 frames per edit without affecting your story and pacing.

If you commit to the idea of making a 16mm blow-up before you edit your movie on film, then don't cut your film to the exact frame, leave an extra frame or two at the beginning of each shot and the end of each shot.

Do your final sound mix after your 16mm blow-up is made, as that will represent "Picture-Lock".

Before you take this blow-up step...research the benefits of having a 16mm negative print of your film....

The benefits are many.

Back in the mid 80's, I was able to have a lab make (4) Super-8mm prestriped prints from the 16mm copy!

So, I was able to go Super-8 to 16mm and BACK to Super-8mm, and I'm pretty sure those 4 Super-8 prints looked as good as if I had made a contact print off of my original Super-8 print.



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Alex

[rollemfilm]

another company that does blow ups, ST Productions: www.stprods.com/v2f/

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[Cheung]

Thanks you all!

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[Alex]

By the way, one really cool benefit of making a 16mm negative from your Super-8 Edit Master is you can transfer directly to any video standard you want...NTSC, PAL, Secam...etc.....without having to make a video conversion.

A high-quality video conversion can be quite expensive, and your film can be rejected anyways because many countries would rather a transfer made directly from the film master than a vidoe conversion from one Video Standard to another.

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Alex

[Matt Pacini]

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Courier, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Alex:
By the way, one really cool benefit of making a 16mm negative from your Super-8 Edit Master is you can transfer directly to any video standard you want...NTSC, PAL, Secam...etc.....without having to make a video conversion.

A high-quality video conversion can be quite expensive, and your film can be rejected anyways because many countries would rather a transfer made directly from the film master than a vidoe conversion from one Video Standard to another.

<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>


(Matt Pacini responds):
Huh?
This doesn't make any sense to me.
I can't transfer to different video standards from Super 8?
Since when?
Clarify what you're saying, because I can go to PAL, Secam or NTSC from Super 8, 16mm, 35mm it makes no difference what film it's on...

Matt Pacini



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[Alex]

"I can't transfer to different video standards from Super 8? Since when?"

Matt Pacini
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You're taking what I said too literally.

I meant once a 16mm negative is made, you have maxium flexibility with your 16mm negative to either make additional prints or transfer directly to another country's video standard from the 16mm optical blow-up.

Plus, if the 16mm blow-up has been color and density corrected, (and it should be) chances are greater your Rank transfer time will be significantly reduced than if you transfer from the original Super-8 edited film master.

Rank transfers to a foreign standard usually cost anywhere from 50% to 100% per hour than doing a transfer to your own country's video standard.

So a 16mm Optical Blow up from Super-8mm should transfer significantly faster than the Super-8mm original, and save you more money when you go to do film to video transfers for foreign markets.

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Alex

[MovieStuff]

Previously, Alex wrote:

"Plus, if the 16mm blow-up has been color and density corrected, (and it should be) chances are greater your Rank transfer time will be significantly reduced than if you transfer from the original Super-8 edited film master.
So a 16mm Optical Blow up from Super-8mm should transfer significantly faster than the Super-8mm original, and save you more money when you go to do film to video transfers for foreign markets."

I disagree as this is a false economy, in my opinion.

The amount of money necessary to build timing adjustments into a negative during an optical super 8 to 16mm blow up will far outweigh the cost of doing the same thing on the Rank after the fact.

Remember, the negative has greater latitude than the reversal it is copying. Therefore, the smart thing to do is to let the negative take the hit during the blow up, confident that all the information will be there for later use on the Rank, where real time tweaking of the image is far more cost effective than doing so in the lab where multiple answer prints (to verify the timing you are trying to build into the negative) are numbingly expensive.

Typically, when labs blow up optically to negative from reversal, they use a "best light" approach where a consistent general exposure is used all the way through the run. Then, during printing or Rank transfer, the image is tweaked to re-establish the desired color and contrast in case there was any drift in the reversal's original density or color.

This is because timing on a contact printer or the Rank is much easier and more cost effective than timing on the optical printer where errors in timing means having to re-do the optical from scratch.

Technically, what you say is true. IF the blow up had the necessary timings built into the negative, then that might save time on the Ranks transfers. However:

1) The cost of building those timings into an optical blow up makes it impractical.

2) The timings required for the Rank won't be the same as for a print.

Therefore, one must either schedule Rank time to verify the timings of the new negative (which would defeat the purpose of building the timings into the negative) or one must pull answer prints (which won't tell you if the timings are correct for the Rank). In either case, you are spending time and money that defeats the intended economy of the formula.

Roger


[This message has been edited by MovieStuff (edited September 30, 2001).]